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6 Responses to “The TSA at work”

So.. a small chunk of metal shaped like a handgun cartridge is not legal to bring with you on the airplane – not because it breaks any laws or anything, but because the TSA kabuki dancer at the gate in Idaho didn’t like them (probably pooped in his tighty-whities when he saw ’em).

Few years ago I came out of semi-retirement to buy out a gun&pawn store I had helped a longtime cop buddy start when he retired, when he had a chance to go back to the SO as head of CSI. I planned to find another retiring leo gunnie to train and back in the business and go back to my own retirement.

A year later that hadn’t happened largely because I disliked the location and the dick that owned it and didn’t want to stick a new guy into a bad situation so I just liquidated it.

In the meantime it was 2016 and my two main plays of precious metals and shootin’ irons were having themselves an echo boomlet due to preppers and regular scared folks anticipating a Beast regime; every form of silver from junk US coins to bars and rounds were hot commodities along with most anything shootable.

Some of the private mints started putting out novelties to take advantage of both markets, which included various ammo facsimiles. One of them was especially appealing; a box of ten .45 ACP cartridges beautifully done dead ringers headstamp and all and each weighing exactly 1 troy ounce, and a nice box with logo and artwork, “Silver Bullets”. I liked ’em and sold a bunch. Unfortunately for one of my good customers, he liked them enough to buy ten boxes, to him a cool way of getting 100 ounces of .999 silver and way more interesting than a the typical boring slabs…and he did love his .45’s to boot. Then he took a trip, checking his pistols and ammo but taking the silver bullets with him in carryon some of which he planned to gift to friends. Bad idea. They flagged those faux bullets, pretty harshly took him to interview and somehow made the connection that since he was toting these and had four handguns and two long guns in checked baggage he must be up to no good. They kept him for four hours, threatened to arrest him on federal charges (of what I don’t know), he missed his flight and the last one of the day to his destination, and it took him reaching out to the sheriff of our county, his lawyer who was also a county commissioner, and a state senator who was a personal friend, to make it all go away.

Pretty screwed up, but a valuable lesson in the stupidity of low-tone gov functionaries, and a wake-up call that just because you’re a standup citizen who has done nothing wrong, doesn’t mean they can’t fuck you up at will.